Browser is more friendly, you can find a quick tutorial here
http://petermodzelewski.blogspot.in/2013/06/short-jhat-tutorial-diagnosing.html
For command line usage
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/tools/share/jhat.html
[EDIT]
Step 1: Keep you application Running
Step 2: Find the process id (pID --say 4416)
Step 3: Run below command from (JDKHOME)
jmap -dump:live,file=snapshot.11212013 4416
After running this, you should get a message saying
heatdump is created
Step 4: Start jHat by executing following command (
jhat -J-Xmx1024m snapshot.11212013
You should get a message saying
Snapshot resolved.
Started HTTP server on port 7000
Server is ready.
Step 5: Open the browser for :
http://localhost:7000/
Step 6 : By default, link to all classes are shown
Step 7: Search your class ( find option of browser)
Step 8 : Clicking on the link should take to a page where you can see all the variables, references, sub classes and its memory usage
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